Take the Leap of Faith

Hello all,

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It is with mixed emotions that as of today I will be stepping down as CEO of High Purity New England. I will however remain on in a consultant role for the foreseeable future.

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I founded High Purity New England from the guest bedroom of my Barrington, Rhode Island house in 2002 and for years it was a solo venture. Over time it grew into a company of a few people, distributing products for other companies. In 2009, I had the misfortune of a distributor who accounted for roughly half of our annual sales go direct and pull our distribution agreement virtually overnight – I was terrified. I had children to feed and bills to pay with multiple children about to enter college.

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From that experience, I knew I had to diversify the company to create security, provide for my family, and be able to continue to grow the company. In that moment, I decided to take a chance and it was an incredibly scary one at the time. I decided to put everything on the line, including all of our savings, and every last penny I could find to build an in-house cleanroom. In 2010, we started making our single-use assemblies in that very small cleanroom at our original HQ at 25 Thurber Boulevard. The room could only hold about 6 people when being used at maximum capacity — a far cry from our now state-of-the-art facilities.

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From there, the company started to grow, and before I knew it, it was 2014 and we were a company of 10 employees. It remained as such for many years until 2018, when the company really started to take off. That is when we opened our new HQ at 2 Thurber. We are now a company of roughly 150 employees with two large facilities, and more than 100,000 square feet of operating space including multiple cleanrooms & labs, with a very bright future ahead of us.

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On that fateful day in 2009, I would never in a million years have imagined that I would be one day writing those figures down as stated facts in a letter to you all as I retire. It is a humbling thing to be sitting here writing this email to you all through that lens. A lifetime of work summarized in a single email when in the course of those 20 years, so much has happened – so many headaches, so many challenges and so many moments of triumph and perseverance.

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My point in all of this is to impart on you all some words of wisdom and that would be this; take the leap of faith. If I hadn’t taken my own leap of faith in 2002, I would not be here now writing this email to all of you as departing CEO & Founder of HPNE. If I hadn’t taken my own leap of faith, I would not have known what it was like to follow my dreams.

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I want to end with acknowledging how immensely proud I am of the work we have accomplished together. It has been a joy to not only grow this company to where we are today, but to develop relationships with you all and to witness your own professional development take place. In many ways we have been on this journey together and what a journey it has been. That said, I will still be working with a few of you in a consulting role remotely and I am sure I will find a way to stop in and say hi from time to time.

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I also remain available to you all, should you need me. I am only an email away.

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Thank you!

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All my best,

Mark A. Sitcoske